Desktop dreams: Ubuntu 11.10 reviewed

Ubuntu 11.10, codenamed Oneiric Ocelot, was released earlier this month. In …

Ubuntu 11.10, codenamed Oneiric Ocelot, prowled out of the development forest earlier this month. In our review of Ubuntu 11.04, released back in April, we took a close look at the strengths and weaknesses of the new Unity shell and compared it with GNOME 3.0. In this review, we're going to revisit Unity to see how much progress it has made over the past six months. We will also take a close look at the updated Software Center user interface and the transition from Evolution to Thunderbird.

Unity

The Unity desktop shell, which provides the heart of Ubuntu's user interface, is one of the distribution's key differentiating features. It was originally unveiled at an Ubuntu Developer Summit in 2010 and became a standard part of the desktop installation in version 11.04 earlier this year.

Although the Unity shell brought a number of significant aesthetic and usability improvements to the Ubuntu desktop, it suffered from some real drawbacks. The quality of the Unity environment that shipped in Ubuntu 11.04 was eroded by technical rough edges, questionable design decisions, and a handful of reliability issues. It was ready to ship, but not mature enough to shine.

Ubuntu's developers have done a great deal of work over the past six months to fill in the gaps and make the Unity experience better for end users. This effort has helped to flesh out previously incomplete parts of the user interface and has produced a noticeable improvement in Unity's robustness during day-to-day use. It's now more stable and its behavior is generally more predictable.

A number of design changes have also contributed to better usability in 11.10, but some of our major grievances with Unity still haven't been fully addressed. Unity looks like a work in progress, and looks like it needs one more cycle of refinement to reach full maturity.

Dash

A particularly large number of changes were made to Unity's Dash interface in Ubuntu 11.10. The Dash is an overlay that exposes all of the application launchers and provides quick access to files. In the previous version of Ubuntu, the main Dash views were accessible through separate "lenses" that had specific features. In 11.10, the standard lenses have all been consolidated into a more a streamlined Dash.

The Ubuntu button used to activate the Dash was previously located on the left edge of the top panel, but in the new version it has been moved into the dock itself. It now appears as the top item in the dock. This seems like a good change because it increases consistency, making the function of the button more obvious.

The user can optionally maximize the Dash in 11.10, making it fill the whole screen so that additional content is visible. This feature can be toggled by hitting the maximize button that appears in the top left-hand corner while the Dash is visible. I like to have the Dash maximized on my netbook, but favor the regular size on a desktop computer.

The main Dash view gives you quick access to the Web browser, mail client, music player, and photo management application. At the bottom of the Dash is a new context switcher that allows the user to easily change between the various lens views: application launchers, documents, music, and home. The application and document lenses work mostly like their equivalents in the previous version.

The music lens is a new feature designed to integrate with the Banshee music player and with Canonical's music store. The music lens will show you the songs and albums that you have in your media library. When you click one, it will launch Banshee and start playing, and the music is displayed with album cover art. You can use the built-in search feature to quickly find specific songs and albums. In addition to showing music in your local library, it will also show an additional section of matching songs that are available for purchase from the Ubuntu music store.

The file and application lenses got some improvements in 11.10. The file lens has a more sophisticated set of filtering options that make it easier to find specific files, and it has already proved useful by saving me a few trips to the file manager.

In our review of Ubuntu 11.04, we singled out the abominable app lens for special criticism, accusing it of being one of the worst atrocities perpetrated in the history of desktop interface design since Microsoft Bob. The replacement of the wretched pseudo combobox in favor of a nice and clean category filter interface has made the whole thing much less execrable in 11.10. It's actually starting to feel respectable.

When you select a category, it shows three sections: frequently used applications in the category, applications in the category, and applications that you can install in that category. The list of installable applications is still a mostly-useless and seemingly random assortment of things that I don't care about. There is also sometimes redundancy between the list of frequently used applications and the regular list.

The application lens will now thankfully remember when you expand the full list of installed applications, so you don't have to do so every time you want to launch something. Between that and the proper one-click category filtering, the application lens is a great deal more practical in 11.10. It's finally workable enough for day-to-day use.

The Dash's home lens allows a global search of Dash content, including files, applications, and music. It subjectively feels faster than the equivalent feature from the previous version, and Dash performance in general seems a bit snappier.

Global menubar

My criticisms of the global menubar implementation still stand in 11.10. The issues with inconsistent titling, title truncation, dialogs that make a parent window's menus inaccessible, and the inherent lack of discoverability haven't been addressed. Some applications with non-standard widgets, such as LibreOffice, still don't support global menubar integration.

I wrote in my 11.04 review that I was on the fence about the global menubar in Ubuntu but thought that it seemed promising. Seeing that none of the issues have materially been addressed in 11.10 was a bit disappointing. I'm hopeful that the developers will refine it further before Ubuntu 12.04 or consider rethinking it in favor of an approach that fits better with the per-window menu paradigm of the standard Linux widget toolkits.

If you think Canonical's gonna drop Unity, you're badly mistaken. They've shown dedication to it and more likely than not won't drop it unless it is thoroughly beaten in the mindshare.I'm a Gnome Shell user, can't wait for Fedora 16 and GS3.2!

I know. I was talking about Unity, but it pretty much all applies to Gnome Shell too, because Unity is a modified version of Gnome Shell.

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As for Unity: you add application icons to the launcher on the left, rather than to the top bar.

Yes. That's my point... I *can't* add shortcuts to the top bar. Or add or move panels.

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Other than that, everything you said is completely untrue of Unity.Right-clicks function the same way,

Not on the top bar it doesn't - yet another function removed.

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You add desktop shortcuts the same way.

Really? I add them by dragging them from the menu in Gnome2. You can't do that in Unity.

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You can use ALT-TAB to list all your applications.

Er, so? In Gnome 2 they're always listed.

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You can minimize windows and maximize windows.

How? I can't see any way to minimise.

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You can use it on multiple monitors.

Yes (I use multiple monitors, and have used Unity), I didn't say you couldn't - but it's crap. Obviously intended for a single screen.

I've only mentioned the ones most important to myself, but the list of things that Gnome 2 can do, that Unity can't is long, and frustrating.Gnome 2 is less restrictive, and faster (faster meaning less clicks/button presses)

I don't mind change per se, but this all seems like change for the sake of change, and that's stupid. Ubuntu had a good run, but now it's dead to me. I'm switching, probably to Fedora or Linux Mint.

I think it's basically a final roll of the dice (unfortunately). Shuttleworth has already said unless things improve Canonical is not worth putting his money into for more than another 3 or 4 years, and as the "year of the Linux desktop" still hasn't happened, I think he's aiming at being picked up by tablets.

As usual, stupidity, egoism, hubris, and plain ol' lack of common sense account for approximately 100% of all failures. Believing your own press releases; trying, and failing, to be scientifically "cool"; and acting like a rock star account for the other 100%.

...or the virtual desktops feature, with the four boxes on the taskbar, each with a preview of window positions...

Both Nvidia and ATI already have that functionality in their respective software. Why should Microsoft duplicate it?

...Because no they don't? Okay, I found what you're talking about, but it's less than VirtuaWin offers, which I covered. Linux's solution is simple, elegant, and Microsoft hasn't been able to duplicate it. It's a glaring slap in the face from the FOSS community.

I know. I was talking about Unity, but it pretty much all applies to Gnome Shell too, because Unity is a modified version of Gnome Shell.

No, it isn't. They were developed independently. And from your comments, it sounds a lot like you're using GNOME Shell, not Unity.

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You add desktop shortcuts the same way.

Really? I add them by dragging them from the menu in Gnome2. You can't do that in Unity.

Yes, you can. I just did it to check. Open up the Dash, drag the icon to the desktop. No problem.

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You can minimize windows and maximize windows.

How? I can't see any way to minimise.

With the minimize button. In the Ambiance theme, it's a dash, and it's in the upper left of the application window, between the close button and the maximize button -- just like it's been since they moved it from defaulting to the upper right of the application window.

I vastly prefer Unity to Gnome 2, which in my experience was an inconsistent mess trying too hard to mimic the dated Windows interface.

I'm very happy to see Canonical trying to improve the desktop rather than just playing catch-up. Unity isn't perfect, and the Ubuntu colour scheme, while distinctive, is still painful to look at, but at least they seem to be realising that not all UI improvement is just 'pointless gloss'.

Sweet delicious irony that a couple posters have compared Gnome 2 to Windows. Back in the Gnome 2/KDE 3 days I compared Gnome to the Mac and KDE to Windows, because of their respective interfaces and design ethics.

I love Unity on my netbook. It's okay on my laptop. I hate it on my desktop. In 11.04, I could fall back on the good ol' GNOME desktop that looked and felt just like it did in 10.10. In 11.10, the GNOME 3 option is nowhere near as polished; positively crude, in fact. I'm using Xubuntu now. I don't like Xubuntu as much as the old GNOME 2 desktop, but it's better than the current GNOME 3.

This is a huge disappointment. I was initially very enthused about Unity because I thought it showed that Canonical really understood that the smaller form factor of a netbook demanded a different kind of interface from the desktop, unlike Microsoft who for years tried to use their desktop Windows UI on everything down to PDAs. Now I see that they Canonical doesn't get it at all; they're just as "one size fits all" as Windows used to be, except that the one size they chose is S, not XXXL.

I am using Ubuntu 11.04 with Gnome3. I tried Unity when it forst came out and did not like it. I have no interest in trying it again. I have my laptop (System 76 Pangolin) tweaked exactly the way I want it and it has been running problem-free for months. Is there any compelling reason why I should upgrade to 11.10? Also, is Unity going to take over Ubuntu in the future? If so, what is the best alternative Linux system to go to in order to avoid Unity?

After reading this, I'm not convinced that Unity can be fixed. Number One on my personal beef list is the global menu bar. Imagine running Pidgin with the buddy list on the far right of a widescreen monitor and having to first, put Pidgin in focus, then moving the mouse all the way to the upper left of the screen to access its menu. It's even worse for small windowed applications like calculator. (I only have a single monitor. I'm afraid to even ask how Unity positions the global menu bar with a dual monitor set up.)

The Window buttons on the left side is irritating. Though I can move them back to the right using gconf-editor, it only works on normalized windows. Maximizing a window in Unity is really going to full screen. There is no real maximize window in Unity. When full screened, the window buttons return to the left side.

I gave Unity a shot beginning with 11.04 and now 11.10. I've had enough. I'm going to switch to Kubuntu as soon as this disk burn completes. Those of you that like Unity are welcomed to it.

This is a very accurate review, for those of you who haven't actually tried it out yet. Unity definitely is still annoying to use, but it's a lot better than 11.04. Of course, installing Gnome-Shell or Gnome-Classic will only take you a few minutes, so Unity isn't really a drawback to using Ubuntu. Overall, Ubuntu is a great OS, so don't give up on it just because of Unity!

Gnome 3's limited settings annoy me, but thankfully Ubuntu seems to have added their own theme-switching interface in the background settings section :)

I was annoyed with some hardware support problems, but most of them were easily fixed in a few hours.

So, Kubuntu is installed. Wow! I haven't used KDE in a few years. KDE has made great strides since then. What a difference!

I still like Ubuntu. That's why I stuck with Kubuntu rather than switch to an entirely different distro. But, Unity left a really negative impression on me. If Canonical gives us the option to install either Unity or Gnome 3 during install on their next, LTS release, I'll go back. But, if they do that, they might be disappointed with how many people will opt for Gnome.

Sweet delicious irony that a couple posters have compared Gnome 2 to Windows. Back in the Gnome 2/KDE 3 days I compared Gnome to the Mac and KDE to Windows, because of their respective interfaces and design ethics.

The only similarity between Gnome and Mac OS X are the fact they both have a menu bar at the top.

After reading this, I'm not convinced that Unity can be fixed. Number One on my personal beef list is the global menu bar. Imagine running Pidgin with the buddy list on the far right of a widescreen monitor and having to first, put Pidgin in focus, then moving the mouse all the way to the upper left of the screen to access its menu. It's even worse for small windowed applications like calculator. (I only have a single monitor. I'm afraid to even ask how Unity positions the global menu bar with a dual monitor set up.)

This 'problem' has existed for years on Mac OS X, and yet I still find Adium far nicer to use than Pidgin.

In my humble opinion, the advantages afforded by a global menu bar far exceed the minor issues you describe - which only occur in very specific use cases, and are only an issue when you need to use the menu bar frequently, which shouldn't be the case for any properly designed piece of software.

Even then, it's arguable that the infinite hitbox afforded by the global menu bar makes it sufficiently faster to make that initial menu click that the distance disadvantage is cancelled out.

I like Ubuntu but I really don't like the look and feel of the new interface. I have a desktop computer, not a tablet. I want non-intrusive menus, not huge icon buttons. I also like having shortcuts to apps on the top menu bar. So I down-graded back to 11.04 where the ClearLooks theme is still working. I'm happy with that for now.

I'm a bit disappointed in 11.10. I wanted to write my thesis on it, since Ubuntu generally feels better for productivity then Windows ever has.However after a few days of trying to get the desktop to expand to my second monitor I resigned and switched back to Windows. The small advantage that Ubuntu has pales in comparison to a nice dualview environment.I was told this is due to a general problem with the proprietary ATI drivers. The open source ones flat out don't work...Fortunately my favorite TeX-Editor is cross platform.

At work, I've used Fedora 15 through VMware Player; due to the limitations of the graphics emulation, I couldn't use Gnome Shell, so I used XFCE instead. I was surprised that several applications I thought depended upon Gnome worked fine in XFCE, and XFCE, in general, seemed pretty much like Gnome 2.

I like Unity, and I want development of it to continue; while I think the complaints about Unity are exaggerated, I'm not going to claim they're baseless, and I can't blame people for preferring an alternative. So I wonder if Xubuntu can be developed to include support for more of what people liked in Gnome 2, without mucking things up for people who had already chosen XFCE over Gnome 2.

At work, I've used Fedora 15 through VMware Player; due to the limitations of the graphics emulation, I couldn't use Gnome Shell, so I used XFCE instead. I was surprised that several applications I thought depended upon Gnome worked fine in XFCE, and XFCE, in general, seemed pretty much like Gnome 2.

I like Unity, and I want development of it to continue; while I think the complaints about Unity are exaggerated, I'm not going to claim they're baseless, and I can't blame people for preferring an alternative. So I wonder if Xubuntu can be developed to include support for more of what people liked in Gnome 2, without mucking things up for people who had already chosen XFCE over Gnome 2.

Xubuntu already includes half of Gnome for this reason. As for pissing off Xfce fans, it depends which Xfce fans: the people who used Xfce as a replacement for CDE, or the people who use Xfce now. It's already undergone heavy Gnomeification.

There's nothing wrong with the UI.Super key/windows key -- Tab to change lenses -- mouse click for filters it a fraction of the time. I suggest everyone learn keyboard shortcut and mouse tricks makes your life a lot easier and working with the UI faster.

There's nothing wrong with the UI.Super key/windows key -- Tab to change lenses -- mouse click for filters it a fraction of the time. I suggest everyone learn keyboard shortcut and mouse tricks makes your life a lot easier and working with the UI faster.

That doesn't change the fact that the UI in that screenshot is poorly designed. Keyboard shortcuts aren't meant to be a replacement for poor control layout.

I don't care all that much whether Ubuntu uses Unity, Gnome Shell or goes back to something like Gnome 2. All I care about is that Ubuntu 11.10 is completely disfunctional on my laptop, even after a fresh install, whereas 11.04 worked reasonably well. There are too many bugs to count, some of them very serious. For example, my touchpad freezes almost constantly (once every few minutes), then comes back to life and starts clicking and dragging things around the screen. After about 10-15 seconds, it gives me back control. I've gotten kind of used to this one: I call it "the ghost." Another interesting bug is that windows randomly maximize and unmaximize by themselves, sometimes back and forth several times in a split second. I attribute this one to "the ghost" as well. Another juicy bug: sometimes nothing but the desktop is visible when I boot up. In order to get anything else to show, I have to drop into a root terminal and restart lightdm. These problems show up immediately after a fresh install, so it has nothing to do with any tweaks. It's enough to make me consider going over to another distro or going back to Windows. If my computer has so many problems, I bet a good fraction of Ubuntu 11.10 users are seeing similar problems. I just can't believe Canonical released such a broken update.

There's nothing wrong with the UI.Super key/windows key -- Tab to change lenses -- mouse click for filters it a fraction of the time. I suggest everyone learn keyboard shortcut and mouse tricks makes your life a lot easier and working with the UI faster.

That doesn't change the fact that the UI in that screenshot is poorly designed. Keyboard shortcuts aren't meant to be a replacement for poor control layout.

Yeah, this. Each computer comes with two perfectly good input devices and both use cases should be properly supported. I use in excess of 70 different shortcuts every day but then I'm computer literate and I also like having the option of just mousing when I'm feeling lazy.

Yeah, this. Each computer comes with two perfectly good input devices and both use cases should be properly supported. I use in excess of 70 different shortcuts every day but then I'm computer literate and I also like having the option of just mousing when I'm feeling lazy.

I think part of what I've liked about Unity is that I've found it easy to use just about all the GUI features with just the keyboard -- which may be why I'm not so bothered by clumsy layout with respect to using the mouse. But you're right: improving one input system is no excuse for degrading the other.

What bothers me with most UIs is that it's usually difficult to do what you want with just the keyboard or just the mouse, and it's annoying to switch back and forth. The optimal position for the mouse with respect to my body is under the optimal position to keep my dominant hand, which is also the optimal position for that side of the home row of my keyboard. This means that switching between mouse and keyboard frequently means either discomfort when mousing, discomfort when typing, or frequent disruptions as I keep swapping the placements of the mouse and the keyboard.

So, I feel like I've gone from switching back and forth all the time, to mostly using the keyboard, and I perceive it as an improvement. But I could see this issue explaining why so many people are so emphatically disgusted with Unity.

I hated unity in 11.04, though I tried to like it. Ended up using gnome classic. When I installed 11.10, first thing I did was to switch to gnome classic. Then I decided to try gnome3 and really hated it. Finally I decided to give unity another try and I was surprised. I'm really liking it. They fixed a lot of the things that were bothering me before and I think I'm gonna stick with it. But I agree, I think it needs a little more cooking to ready for prime time.

Mostly hits and you don't have to fumble around for some driver disk only to find out it's the wrong version.

Most of the time, there's a Linux driver that gives you some basic measure of functionality from your device. Graphics cards are generally supported, although you won't get the same kind of performance out of them as on Windows. My Nvidia card, for example, doesn't support display dimming for Linux, which really kills my laptop's battery life. Wireless cards really are hit-or-miss; the first laptop I used Ubuntu on experienced kernel panics on some encrypted networks, and it took a lot of searching to find a driver that wouldn't freeze up my computer intermittently. Ditto with my current laptop. So yes, Linux driver support is spotty. In general, that's what you sign up for when you use Linux. It's not for general users who just want their computer to work. It's for hobbyists and people who know how to compile software from the source.

I only recently started using Ubuntu and after some tweaking I was able to get things the way I liked. I made the mistake of upgrading to 11.10 and now I have this menu on the left side of my desktop that I really don't like. The previous release let me choose the clasic desktop which was not bad. I could keep my limited desktop space clean. (I am using a laptop). Now it seems that there is not an easy way to go back to the clasic desktop. I might as well stick with Windows, at least Microsoft lets me go back to the clasic settings which I prefer as they don't seem to use as much of my resources and don't have the bling which I don't need. I was going to reload my server which currently runs SuSE but now I am glad I didn't. I was just getting comfortable with Ubuntu and now I don't know if its worth hacking to get back to something that I can use....

I only recently started using Ubuntu and after some tweaking I was able to get things the way I liked. I made the mistake of upgrading to 11.10 and now I have this menu on the left side of my desktop that I really don't like. The previous release let me choose the clasic desktop which was not bad. I could keep my limited desktop space clean. (I am using a laptop). Now it seems that there is not an easy way to go back to the clasic desktop. I might as well stick with Windows, at least Microsoft lets me go back to the clasic settings which I prefer as they don't seem to use as much of my resources and don't have the bling which I don't need. I was going to reload my server which currently runs SuSE but now I am glad I didn't. I was just getting comfortable with Ubuntu and now I don't know if its worth hacking to get back to something that I can use....

It's very easy to get the classic desktop back:The old desktop is called gnome classic and it's very easy to get it back.

Open up a command line and type:sudo apt-get updatetype in password

Then type:sudo apt-get install gnome-session-fallback

press y and enter at the prompt.

Once that's done installing, log out or reboot. When you get the log in screen, click on the litte gears icon next to where you input your name and select gnome classic.It will now boot into the gnome classic desktop until your change it back to the new ubuntu desktop if you want to.

Just tried wubi with 11.10 on a 10 year old ASUS 87N8X Deluxe MOBO. Also just uninstalled it. Horrible horrible horrible. The screen was not sized well and none of what you showed is what I saw. Well most of it. Windows stuck and didn't go away. Trying to change the display to fit my screen didn't work. Maybe I needed 2D without hardware excelleration. Maybe I needed Gnome 3.0. Maybe but no one is going to go through that. Very disapointed. 10.04 and 8.04 live CDs work great.

I must confess that, after trying Ubuntu 11.04, I had a big question in mind: "Is another desktop really necessary ? What is the scope of Unity ?". Now after using Ubuntu 11.10 for a few days, I definitely have to say that I really dislike Unity, and for a number of reasons. Most of the time I spend in front of a computer screen, this is Windows 7, and I work very confortably with it, as everything (well, almost everything) is where I would expect it to be, and this is to me, good human engineering.Now, what is Unity, what paradigma does Unity follow? Did Unity designers ever listen to user feedback and suggestions ? It seems to me that, maybe, Unity is oriented toward the use of a touch-screen, which the majority of PC user do not have, at least not yet. Is Unity designed for computer usability and productivity, or is it another exercise of style, just stylish, but only stilish ?

Personally, I installed Gnome Shell, and then I usually login in Gnome classic, which I tweaked by moving the top panel to the bottom of the screen, and enabling a number of desktop icons.

Most of the time I spend in front of a computer screen, this is Windows 7, and I work very confortably with it, as everything (well, almost everything) is where I would expect it to be, and this is to me, good human engineering.

Really, everything is where you expect it to be on the OS you spend most of your time on? I'm astonished.